This week I found an article which analyzes the station of higher education in Africa. We haven’t yet dealt with African cases in class, so I figured that this might be a topic of interest. The article “The African University as ‘Global’ University” was written by Isaac Kamola, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College.

Kamola argues that, despite a low matriculation rate of 3% in sub-Saharan Africa, it is intellectually valuable to analyze African universities as global universities. The main thrust is that the ‘globe’ has had an indelible effect on the development of the African university- whether by colonization or the international finance regime- and that the objective for policymakers today is to distinguish between what is African about the university system and what is not.

Perhaps the most interesting point Kamola raises, concerns the role of the World Bank in impeding the development of African higher education. In the years following decolonization, many African states faced financial crises, which they sought to solve with loans from the World Bank. As a condition of the loan, the World Bank mandated austerity measures targeting, among other things, higher education spending. The cuts inspired street protests by university students who were met with violent crackdowns by military and police forces. Today however, the World Bank prioritizes higher education as an essential pathway in economic development. All this provides an interesting backdrop for Kamola’s thesis: that despite it’s low domestic enrollment, lack of research, and lack of international students, African universities are wary of anymore globalization.

For me the piece raises interesting questions about the proper course of higher education policy in developing countries. Should states prioritize creating national universities, which may be directed towards addressing domestic policy problems and fostering locally-sourced solutions, or prioritize university globalization? Is it even possible to make that decision as a developing country when the Western model and its emphasis on internationalization is so dominant globally? How else do you foster a culturally-specific intellectual tradition?

With these questions, I’m reminded of the discussions we had early on this semester regarding the significance of a university’s ‘legacy’ when making admissions decisions. At the time, we were concerned with how a recently established, campus-less university would attract students compared to a similarly ranked conventional university. From Kamola’s perspective, similar questions apply to universities with a colonial legacy, and also to more recently established institutions that continue to be patterned on the Western model. While, he is less concerned with admissions decisions than with cultural cohesion, his answer is that establishing an African university is more important to the continent’s long-term development than simply establishing universities in Africa.